Erased from Space and Consciousness: Israel and the Depopulated Palestinian Villages of 1948

Noga Kadman

Event Descriptions

"This remarkable book examines how the issue of the Palestinian villages whose inhabitants were expelled in 1948 has evolved in the Israeli consciousness. Kadman looks at official Israeli discourse, kibbutz and moshav diaries and records, and the maps produced by the Israeli state to show in disturbing detail how the dispossession of the population of over 400 villages, most of which have since been destroyed, has been largely eliminated from the imaginary of most Israelis."

—Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies, History Department Chair, and Co-Director of the Center for Palestine Studies.

Hundreds of Palestinian villages were left empty across Israel when their residents became refugees after the 1948 war, their lands and property confiscated. Most of the villages were razed by the new State of Israel, but in dozens of others, communities of Jews were settled — many refugees in their own right. The state embarked on a systematic effort of renaming and remaking the landscape, and the Arab presence was all but erased from official maps and histories. Israelis are familiar with the ruins, terraces, and orchards that mark these sites today — almost half are located within tourist areas or national parks — but public descriptions rarely acknowledge that Arab communities existed there within living memory or describe how they came to be depopulated.

Using kibbutz publications, and visits to the former village sites, Noga Kadman has reconstructed this history of erasure for all 418 depopulated villages.

Noga Kadman is a researcher and licensed tour guide whose main interest is to explore the encounter between Israelis and the Palestinian presence in the landscape and history of the country. She is co-editor of Once Upon a Land: A Tour Guide to Depopulated Palestinian Villages and Towns (in Hebrew and Arabic).